Use the following trick to get a great team without a high salary cost. Start a new franchise and pick a team. Do a fantasy draft and pick all the worst players.

Then, release all of them and make your team from scratch, through Create-A-Player mode. Once done with the height, faces, etc., do not change the attributes. Save the player and sign him. Once you sign him, go back to Create-A-Player and select his name and change all his attributes to the maximum. Repeat this until you have a team with full attributes.

The reason that all the worst players were selected is to keep you from having a high cap penalty during the next season. Note: This will take a few hours to complete